Abstract
The Southeast Europe region of the Western Balkans and Turkey has witnessed a burgeoning growth of LGBT organizing within and across countries. It also continues to experience patterns of homophobic violence, including attacks on public Pride events. This region has been coming under increasing scrutiny by the European Union and international bodies for rights protections for gender and sexual minorities. Scrutiny has been particularly intense as each of these countries moves toward European Union accession. This chapter comparatively chronicles the continued patterns of violence, the legal and social changes to address the violence, and the activists’ use of external rights instruments as boomerangs or ricochets to advance their social inclusion and reverse the impunity for violence at the individual and systemic levels.
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- 1.
The one former Yugoslav country not included here is Slovenia, since it was already a member of the European Union when this research was conducted.
- 2.
In this instance “LGBTT” stands for “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transvestite, and Transsexual.”
- 3.
The 2013 law is Turkey’s first domestic law on asylum. Previously, asylum procedures fell under secondary legislation.
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Acknowledgments
Susan Pearce would like to thank the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC for the Title VIII East European Studies research grant that funded this research and provided office space at the Center. She especially appreciates the support of Christian Ostermann, Nida Gelazis, Kristina Terzieva, Janet Spikes, Rebecca Akdeniz, and Elena Volkava. Alex Cooper would like to thank the faculty at The College of William and Mary for their support, which allowed him to conduct this research. He would also like to thank his mentors Leslie M. Waters, Monica D. Griffin, Paula M. Pickering, and Tomoko Hamada Connolly for their assistance and continued encouragement. Both authors would like to express their humble appreciation to the individuals who shared their stories and helped arrange for interviews during field research in the United States and Europe.
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Pearce, S.C., Cooper, A. (2014). LGBT Movements in Southeast Europe: Violence, Justice, and International Intersections. In: Peterson, D., Panfil, V. (eds) Handbook of LGBT Communities, Crime, and Justice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9188-0_15
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